Brown, who did it his way, is retiring as Dixon's baseball coach

“But through it all, when there was doubt / I ate it up and spit it out / I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way,”

— “My Way,” Frank Sinatra

HOLLY RIDGE — Dixon baseball coach Jack Brown is a Frank Sinatra fan.

“I listen to him in the weight room all the time,” Brown said. “It drives the kids crazy. They go, ‘Who is that?’ I say, ‘It’s culture.’”

And now that the end is near – not THE end, but an end – Brown’s concluding anthem as he heads into retirement could be one of ol’ blue eyes’ mega hits because the coach some love to hate and others just love certainly did it his way.

“Exactly,” Brown said. “Exactly. I’m good with that.”

Brown has always done it his way. Good or bad, win or lose, the stocky coach who always seemed to be in a contest with his buddy and former Topsail coach Bill White to see who could walk to the mound slower has remained true to himself.

What you see is what you get. Got a question? Ask, but only if you want the truth according to Brown.

“I’m one of those men, I’m going – how can I say this? – to say what I mean and I mean what I say. Honestly and reality is what should make the world go around,” Brown said. “A lot of people just don’t want to know the truth, but that’s just the way I am.

“I couldn’t be a politician because I don’t beat around the bush. To me baseball has no room for politics. That’s for people in Washington, D.C.”

It would be fair to say no one will ever accuse Brown of being a politician. But politicians don’t win 371 games and counting in 16 seasons at a school he transformed from a “laughingstock” when he took over to a team that opponents take for granted at their peril.

But Brown has had enough. Not of baseball. Not of Dixon. But of something else, which in his world is essential. So a few weeks beyond his 55th birthday – and bench pressing 300 pounds three times on that day back on March 25 – Brown is retiring at the end of this season.

Regrets? He’s had a few, but then again too few to mention.

Brown sat down with The Daily News in his small, cluttered office that featured a bevy of pictures of many of the teams he’s coached over the years to reflect on his career as the final curtain nears. By turns, he would lean back or forward in his chair, occasionally rubbing his hand through his graying hair and the seeming perpetual stubble on his face. There were smiles, but no frowns. And, as always, there were straight forward answers.

So why was he leaving the game he loved so much for so long?

“Well, there’s a few factors. The biggest one is that pretty much for nine years I haven’t had a significant pay raise and your last few years of your job, regardless of what it is, you should make more money every year and we’re not doing that,” he said. “I’m tired of being disrespected by the state of North Carolina, and it’s not anybody in Onslow County, because you know everything flows down hill.

“I’m not judging anybody in Onslow County, and it’s statewide. I know a lot of good coaches who are in better shape than I am that are better coaches than me and that’s why they’re getting out of it and they’re pursuing other interests.”

Brown said he was “fortunate” because along with teaching and coaching he’s built “a lot” of houses as a licensed building contractor.

“I’m still young and I can get out there and work, bang nails, and I enjoy that. It’s like coaching, but it’s a different way of keeping score,” he said. “But the biggest reason is I’m just tired of coming to work and having more and more and more placed on us and not adding more money because you’re supposed to make more money every year.

“We don’t get into this job for money because I’ve coached some great kids and coached some great teams, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. But I’m tired of being disrespected for everything that we do. And not just me. Every teacher in North Carolina.

“It’s just not right.”

Brown is done with coaching and teaching. He said he will receive his first retirement check – which will be more than he makes now – on July 25.

“Looking forward to it,” he said.

Brown isn’t sure who’ll replace him. He’s pushed for assistant Nick Raynor, 35, to take over the program. Athletic Director Brandon Ball, 43, who also could replace Brown, said no decision has been made yet by Principal Steve Clarke.

“I could probably do this for 10 more years and love doing it,” he said. “But to know that I can be retired and actually make more money, that’s a no-brainer for me.”

Brown was asked if leaving was bittersweet. No, he said. He felt he was going out on his terms

“I started to retire last year, but I had too many question marks and I had too many doubts,” he said. “I’m the kind of person if I’ve got doubts, I’m not going to make decisions with doubts or any question marks.

“So if I had done this last year, I would have been like, I wish I wouldn’t have done that. So I’m glad I worked this extra year.”

Clarke was a “contributing factor” in Brown staying around another year.

“It’s been a joy and a pleasure working for Mr Clarke. He’s made this a peaceful learning environment for everybody, and I’m going to miss him. He’s a great principal,” Brown said, “and he’s a baseball guy.”

The memories are many. Too many. Certainly one he’ll cherish is coaching Rookie Davis, who is now pitching for the Cincinnati Reds. Davis, who was The Daily News player of the year in 2010 and 2011, helped lead the Bulldogs to the NCHSAA 1-A final 2010.

But Davis is just the biggest name – and one of the biggest players – Brown coached at Dixon.

“There’s a lot that stand out and there’s a lot of memories and most of them are very, very good memories,” Brown said. “Of course, the teams when Rookie played and the teams before Rookie played and the teams after Rookie played.

“Rookie was a great player, but we had some other guys that contributed. We won a lot of games with him and without him. He was the best player in this area for three or four years. You never forget people like that.”

While he’ll remember the wins and the loses, Brown, like many coaches heading into retirement, said he’ll miss his players most.

“I’m going to miss the relationship that we have as a team, that’s with the coaches and the players. You want to be like a family,” he said. “I look at our team this year compared to what it was a month ago and we’re a lot closer. That’s what you want. The teams that win it all aren’t always the best players. They’re the best teams. That’s what you want.”

Brown paused and pointed to a framed team picture high on the wall in his office. He said he could go to every picture and name just about every player and what they were doing now. But the one he pointed to was Ernie Wearren, who played for Brown at South Brunswick “a long time ago.”

“He went to the Air Force Academy. He’s a colonel, getting ready to retire,” Brown said. “He’s a story of success. More than any win in baseball, it’s what kids are doing once they get out of your program. He wasn’t a great baseball player, but he’s one of the finest young men I’ve ever coached.”

Then Brown stopped and reflected.

“It’s been a good ride,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been some good times and bad times like anything else. But I tell people about this quote, especially young people..., it’s a Confucius quote, ‘Choice a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.’

“That is so true.”

“There were times ... when I bit off more than I could chew ...”

Brown arrived at Dixon on the last week of October 2001. Principal Tony Zvonar had asked Brown if he wanted to coach baseball. Brown did his homework, checking “every facet” of not only the program but baseball in the area.

His conclusion?

“I told Mr. Zvonar there’s only good thing I can say about your baseball program. It couldn’t get any worse,” Brown recalled. “The uniforms were awful. The field was terrible, and we were a laughingstock. We went to play and people laughed at us.

“We had a hat that looked like a Pennsylvania coal truck hat from a dump truck with the fishnet and the square block ‘D’ on it.”

That, in Brown’s world, is akin to sacrilege.

“True baseball coaches, they’re going to have a nice hat,” he said. “You can judge a baseball coach by three things. How their players wear their uniform, including the hat, and what their field looks like.”

Brown said he told Zvonar that if he’d support him – and there would be “a lot of complaints” from parents and others as he worked to build the program – he would produce a winner. Zvonar said he would.

And so it began on Feb. 11, 2002.

Brown said he has a copy of every practice schedule in his desk drawers. At the bottom of each is a “summary” of the day, Brown said, “how it went, if anybody got hurt.”

“My first day here, if you look at that, it says: What have I got myself into? I used some other words I’m not going to repeat,” he said with a chuckle. “But to see how far we’ve came it’s very meaningful. I remember what Tony Zvonar told me, ‘I want a baseball program at this school that the people of this community can be proud of.’”

After he’d transformed the program, Brown said Zvonar told him he never thought Brown would succeed.

“That means a lot,” Brown said. “To see how far we’ve came and to go from a point that we were laughingstock to now when we go to play people they don’t laugh at us any more.”

And fathers don’t expect to practice with their sons.

At Dixon’s first practice under Brown “five or six dads” headed onto the field with their gloves and spikes. Brown was, to say the least, flabbergasted.

True story – and one that shows another hurdle Brown had to overcome because some parents complained. But Zvonar stood by his coach. Brown was not here to “coach mommy and daddy.” He was here to coach their sons and make decisions for the good of the team and program.

“And that’s not always going to make parents happy. Parents have tunnel vision,” Brown said. “They don’t see what I see. I’m the one that makes decisions. And I’ve had to dismiss kids from the program. All the coaches have input, but I’m the one that makes the decision and I tell the kids the buck stops right here with me. You can tell your mother and father coach Brown made this decision because I’m the head coach.”

"I did it my way...”

Over the years it would be fair to say Brown has rubbed some – perhaps more than some – people the wrong way. At this year’s Touchstone Energy Baseball Classic at Richlands, Brown kept his players in the dugout instead of the traditional handshake between players after a stunning 8-7 loss to Lejeune.

It wasn’t that the Bulldogs had blown a 6-0 lead that got under his skin, although it did. It was that the Devilpups acted like they’d won World Series. More than a few fans, including some from Dixon, were not pleased.

So be it. Brown had made the call.

As he did in 2012 after the Bulldogs lost in the 1-A East Regional final to Voyager Academy. Brown criticized how the NCHSAA handles – or doesn’t handle – private charter schools that he said didn’t play by the same rules as public schools.

The criticism got him sent to the principal’s office – and an order to not talk to the media. To this day, however, memories of Voyager Academy still rankles Brown.

“You’ve got players on your team from seven different counties,” he said, “and in a 25-mile radius that’s where our boys come from. There’s no way you can tell me that’s fair, and that got me in hot water.”

Brown says what he thinks even to his own players – or especially to his own players. After seeing his pitcher try to pick off a runner at first base this past week with Dixon up 7-0, Brown walked to the mound and told him that was “nonsense.”

“And he pitched well,” Brown said. “He really did. But that’s the way I am.”

That will be his legacy. So will the work he and many others did to renovate the field – by Brown’s estimate about $100,000 worth. Then there is his religious insistence on fundamentals and his four team rules: come to practice every day, be on time for practice every day, put on your “blue collar” for practice because the Bulldogs are going to work and don’t embarrass the program or the school.

A self-described good ol’ country boy, Brown is a study in what you see is what you get – and then maybe not.

“I’m not one of those fancy type of guys and come out and look pretty. I’m not (a guy) to get a haircut and a shave (all the time). There’s MARSOC Marines over there that have got long hair and beards and you can’t tell me they’re not disciplined. They’re the most disciplined people on earth because their life depends on it,” Brown said.

“So just because you’ve got a little bit of long hair and facial hair does not mean that you don’t have any discipline. And people are different, and I’m a different kind of guy. That’s what makes the world go around.”

Rick Scoppe can be reached at 910-219-8471 or at rick.scoppe@jdnews.com

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